Although Kurt Kusenberg's short stories never received unanimous acclaim from German critics, an indication of their popularity lies in the number of times admirers have translated them into other languages or included them in anthologies for beginning and intermediate students of German. His international reputation rests on the quality of his work and owes little to critical endorsement.

Kusenberg was born in 1904 in Göteborg, Sweden, the son of a German engineer and textile company representative whose work took him to various countries. In 1906 he was transferred to Lisbon, Portugal, where Kusenberg spent his early childhood. Italian and Brazilian illustrated magazines and the stories of an elderly seamstress employed by the family provided stimuli to Kusenberg's imagination; he said later that he did not stop reading fairy tales until he was twenty. From 1914 to 1922 he attended secondary schools in Wiesbaden, Bühl, and Baden-Baden. He studied...